Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - Issues and arguments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Summary
After finishing the first volume of Capital, Karl Marx sent a copy of the book along with an admiring note to Charles Darwin. Apparently Darwin found little of interest in Marx's work, for the pages in his copy of Capital went uncut. Though Darwin was obviously open to revolutionary ideas in science, he was politically and socially moderate, adhering to the Victorian mores of his upper–class upbringing. Darwin had no desire to be associated with a radical like Marx. Nonetheless, Darwin and Marx did have something very deep in common: a belief that the human species is part of the natural order and thus amenable to scientific understanding. Darwin revolutionized biology and our self-understanding by identifying the processes governing the evolution of species. Marx thought he had done the same for human society. Human society, like any other natural object, was subject to scientific investigation; Marx's task was to “lay bare its laws of motion.” He, like Darwin, thought that we could understand the human species, in all its forms, with scientific rigor.
This book defends Marx's grand idea – not his specific thesis of historical materialism but his faith that standard scientific methods can produce scientific knowledge about the large–scale features of society. I thus intend to defend the doctrines sometimes labelled “naturalism” and “holism.”
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- Information
- Philosophical Foundations of the Social SciencesAnalyzing Controversies in Social Research, pp. 1 - 15Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995